ABOUT

The main focus my practice is big data and almost always starts with a large data set, be it High Frequency Trading, GPS coordinates, or environmental statistics. My work deals with breaking down systems to read and visualize the embedded information. This research is about reflecting on the information and being rigorous enough to break through myths and preconceived notions. This impulse to find the message in the data goes hand-in-hand with uncovering the inherent patterns within. There is a pure and applied science to my research that enables the visual nature to manifest itself physically in forms of drawing, textiles, engraving, video, and sound.

NAOMI COOK (b. 1982, lives and works between Montreal and Paris) studied Art and Philosophy at Concordia University, Montreal. Her technique stems from interest in engravings, sound, and visual representations of data. Her work has been featured in several group exhibitions in Montreal and abroad. Her works were selected by Canadian Art as favourites of the 2015 edition of PAPIER Art Fair, Montreal. In 2016, she was in Paris at Récollets as part of the Résidences Croisées France-Québec. Represented by Christie Contemporary.

Exploring memory, childhood and the modern family structure, these works take their subject from a inherited family interaction. This seemly innocent title and the adventure remembered as such. A trip to the race track could seen from another perspective and a full days disappearances. These six drawings are of a single photograph, predominantly viewed as the unattested record of a memory, these drawings also explore a moment fractured by time.

ideograms

Ideograms (2016) letterpress, 30 x 20 cm, ed 10

Idoegrams is the first in a series of prints using symbols, numbers, characters and ideas that can not be said aloud. You are one in Sum million uses the roman numeral system to express the sentiment in the title. This is done without using the line over top to indicate large sums therefor breaking down and can not spoken. Other works in this series are Moiré 1-2, Trinidy, Time Served and Secours.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday is a video created based on a workshop I gave with families at Studio XX in Montreal.

Music by : Jake Falby

MIDI SKETCHES

Midi Sketches is a continuation of a sound based project called the Pianola. Both involve the musical interpretation of images into sound. Midi sketches or MS melodic loops was created using two process both involving Algorithmic drawing. The tripytic; MS 2 (18, 16, 13, 6, 3), MS 5 (8.5, 6.5), and MS 8 (20, 18, 12.5, 10, 6), was created by an arbitrary horizontal line. This was followed by a procedure of mathematical elimination. Then it was styled by a fractal-inspired way relating to Benoit Mandelbrot theory of noise. The diptych; MS 9(KEY) and MS 10 (GEN) utilized a found midi track as inspiration. The track was reduced to a small section and used as the starting point, then followed by an interpretation into my own artistic language also relating to Benoit Mandelbrot’s theory of noise. Through a process of retro-engineering the drawings were returned to sound using a new program designed by me specifically for this project. This computer program cycles through the artistic marks and busses them to any music software for further musical stylizing. The diptych still retains some qualities of the original score. Both were interpreted using the mathematical rules dictated by the Buffalo Conversion which is basis of all Player Piano Rolls – the starting system for the Pianola project.

Be still my heart

Be still my heart(2018) 46sec HD video

Be still my heart is part of an ongoing series of portraits based on user’s Tinder data. The 43 second video translates one month of data, 147 matches and 398 messages. The process of transferring this information into a video began was done by a program written by myself to simulate a user’s interaction into a hand drawing of a heart and lung. Both the breath and heart beat increases with each match and decrease depending on messages sent.

Same but Different

Same but different (2016) c-print, 60 x 90 cm

This photographs rendered as collages in algorithmic patterns is a scan of a photograph of photograph of a scan of two photographs arranged in the hadamard matrix.

Four by Six

Four by Six (2017) Inkjet print, 65 cm x 93cm

In 2017 I was working on a project centred on ancient datasets derived from religious counting systems and superstitions. What drew me to this building was the apparent grid-like architectural design that was close to the data subject I was researching. In these systems were mathematical principles that separated things into columns and rows. This image is a fractal photo-montage of a building that disappeared the next day and was no longer. The disappearance of the building prompted me to reconstruct the image, enlarging each photo with a mathematical system that spirals it into the centre. This chance encounter with an ephemeral subject challenged the existence of the initial photo and inspired this grid-like composition to separate its essence into four by six. In the process of reconstructing this image it became clear that the absence of the building made the image more real and that the building now only exists in the the photo as if to haunt it.

meatus acusticus internus / acoustic_canal_22s.wav was part of the Pianola Project shown at pfoac221 in 2014 and was commissioned by Pierre François Ouellette art contemporain.

This print is composed of two parts: a hand engraved image of an internal ear canal, and a sound wave visualization engraved by a CNC machine. The sound wave visualization was produced using a computer program I developed that scanned the ear drawing and transferred it into sound.

TROÏKA

In 2016 as part of Résidences croisées FRANCE/QUÉBÉC I was given locational data by three consenting anonymous participants on the last day of women’s affair and members of Ashley Maddison. This project was spurred by a highly publicized user information leak of this dating website specializing in affairs. While in residency at Récollets I examined a day in the life of two of the site’s members and a third person as seen through their GPS coordinates. Their locations span across a city, including home, work, and a visit to a hotel. I call this project Troïka (Troika, aside from being a set of three in Russian, is also a traditional dance with two women and one man). It is seen from the perspective of a female, the central figure of this data set.

With this information I centred all the work in the Troïka project, while exploring the politics of sex through the platform of online networks.

“Detailed analysis of trade and order data revealed that one large internalizer (as a seller) and one large market maker (as a buyer) were party to over 50% of the share volume of broken trades, and for more than half of this volume they were counter parties to each other (i.e., 25% of the broken trade share volume was between this particular seller and buyer).” [I]

Market Findings is part of an on going project exploring High Frequency Trading and was shown at Christie Contemporary in 2017 has part of Form and Fraction.

BATS-2012-03-23

On March 23, 2012 at 11:14:18.436 BATS released a sell algorithm listing it’s own stocks. BATS (Better Alternative Trading System) was founded in 2005 by Dave Cummings, a scalper and pit trader from NASDAQ. Five years later BATS was one of the largest stock exchanges and accounted for almost 10% of all trading. The Exchange, throughout it’s history has made several attempts to create an IPO or Initial Public Offering which is designed to list the best offered price of a given stock to the public. March 23, 2012 was an early attempt at this, and represents the tenuous nature of the stock data used in this video. The stock’s initial price at 11:14:18.436 was $15.25 and plummeted to $0.0002 in 1.25 seconds, subsequently halting trading due to the dramatic loss off value.

This video BATS_2012-03-23 uses this 1.25s of data to present a hand-drawn representation of the minuscule effects of algorithm-based trading on stocks by extending the timeframe to a six-minute video. This allows a more human reading of the fluctuations in buy/sell algorithms that can have profound impacts on our lives.

The process of transferring the stock data into a video began as as program written by the artist to simulate the effect of price, value and time on an object of data represented by an outline drawing of a crumpled American dollar bill. Each second of movement in the video represents three milliseconds of the original data. The crumpled bill moves down the vertical axis and right along the horizontal axis, and compresses or expands – all representing price, time, and value of the stock. High Frequency Traders and other buy/sell interests influence the shape and size of the object, including the EURion constellation’s pattern – an critical signifier for preventing counterfeiting.

– BATS-2012-03-23 was shown in Toronto at Pierre François Ouellette art contemporain as part of the Allegory Algorithm exhibition.

FC 15:36:46.000 time-lapse is a copper engraving based on one millisecond of stock data from May 6th, 2010 – also known as the “Flash Crash”. A total of 379 trades were executed within a single millisecond. This work uses the data from this brief moment, applying it to a human scale. The lines map a distance and direction a person would need to to walk from the New York exchanges BATS, PACF and Nasdaq to exchanges in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and others across the United States.

FC 15:36:46.000 time-lapse (2016) copper plate engraving, 56 x 71 cm

Pianola Project

Pianola (2013) ink on paper, sound, 122 x 548.5 cm

The Pianola Project is based on a player piano roll of Pete Wendling’s song “Hesitation Blues”. This was used as a template to transfer the placement of notes onto a 4 x 18 ft roll of paper. The original height of the scroll is 1 ft, which is scaled up to 4 ft on the large paper, embellishing the original in fractal-inspired way inspired by Benoit Mandelbrot’s theory of noise and disturbance.

The structure retained from the enlargement of the original player piano roll are compositional guides for the drawing, dictated in part by “Hesitation Blues”. This lack of control over the composition has made the process of realizing the drawing more about re-vealing rather than inventing. Through the drawing I am interpreting the original player piano roll’s information in my own artistic language.

Using the guidelines of original player piano roll manufacturing, the speed and format was interpolated. Piano rolls are governed by rules that control the pitch, tone and volume. The Buffalo Convention of December 10, 1908 established two roll formats. “Hesitation Blues” works out to a tempo of 70 signifying 7 feet of paper traveling in one minute, setting the duration of the song at 2min 18s. The movement of sound also relates to the length or the drawing: the technical description of hertz(Hz) uses Feet. The 18 ft of the drawing translates as 19.0556 Hz – a frequency that sits at the very beginning of the human ear’s capacity to hear.

Through a process of retro-engineering the drawing was returned to sound using computer music software and a new program design specifically for this project. This computer program plays through the guidelines and mathematics of the original structure the drawing is based upon. The outcome retains a lingering shadow of the original song; peeking through the new layers of information – either barely audible or structurally dominant as an imperfect rendering mixed with new notes and information; a new composition, re-arranged in a drawing.